


king of carrot flowers

by storytellingape



Category: Crash Pad (2017), Logan Lucky (2017), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Kylux Adjacent Ship, M/M, Secret Landlord Clyde, Tenant Stensland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 14:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13436730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storytellingape/pseuds/storytellingape
Summary: Stensland moves into a new apartment where he meets his maybe landlord Clyde.





	king of carrot flowers

**Author's Note:**

> for the sister woife [@martianReihiko](https://twitter.com/martianReihiko) ❤. also [StaticRaining](https://twitter.com/StaticRaining) who tolerates my flailing about this and also flails with me. maybe part of a larger AU, maybe not. you never know with me.

The apartment is shit but it’s the only one Stensland can afford after getting sacked twice for taking one too many froyo breaks on top of coming to work smelling like patchouli. 

He moves in in the middle of July when summer is at its peak, hauling everything he owns up the three flight of stairs because he’s too cheap to hire a moving van. It takes approximately two hours to get everything situated into the new apartment, and then the next four days is just a bizarre montage of Stensland stuffing everything into cabinets, hoping everything will fit. The rest of his stuff remain untouched in boxes, still covered in newspaper, like the battered cassette player he’d inherited from his previous roommate that still had a mix tape of mostly Eagles song stuck in the deck, and the exercise bike he’d found lying in the street two years ago, missing one pedal but otherwise still usable, dismantled for the move. 

The apartment is a studio, in the better part of the neighbourhood filled with mid-rises painted beige in a mostly poor attempt at a modern makeover.There’s hardly any walking room between the kitchenette and the bed space which is really just a lumpy futon that Stensland had bought with him from his old place, pushed under the dirt-streaked window next to one of the three electrical outlets where he sometimes plugged and charged his phone and his boxy laptop from university, only barely holding on. He didn’t have much in the way of seating, just a misshapen beanbag in a corner next to the standing lamp, and the two plastic chairs that came with the dining table that was attached to and jutted incongruously from the left wall of the kitchen.

The light that floods in from the street outside always keeps Stensland awake at night even with the curtains drawn but that’s not even the worst of it. The worst of it is that Stensland doesn’t own a television which means he can’t watch _Dawson’s Creek_ on VHS. That, and the awful whinging noise the pipes make when Stensland turns on the tap, and the fact the AC only works half the time, rattling feebly and sputtering gusts of warm air that smelled suspiciously like fried wiring. 

Stensland, smoking with the window open to half a crack, pores over a number of HELP WANTED flyers that he would accumulate on his daily walks. He walked everywhere now, as he had to pawn his scooter, Phyllis, for rent money and some change. Sometimes he thought about calling his mum for financial help, but then he remembered why he’d moved out of the country in the first place and resigned himself to the culinary delights of cheese toasties and pot noodles. No luck in the job department seems to be forthcoming but a bar in the outskirts of town called _Duck Tape_ is looking for a part-time barkeep who was amenable to working shifts of varying stretches. Stensland draws a circle around the landline in felt-tip pen until the ink bleeds through the paper. He knows nothing about barkeeping of course, but he’s Irish so he thinks he’s more than qualified. He’s drunk anyway, most of the time. On life, if nothing else. He’s certain he can mix drinks even while blindfolded and hopping around on one foot. 

And then the AC breaks down two days later. Stensland calls the landlord from a payphone across the deli but his messages go largely unanswered which he isn’t all that surprised by. He hasn’t actually met the landlord; he’d mostly dealt with the superintendent who happened to be out of town for a funeral, at least according to his answering machine. 

It all comes to a head two days later when he’s loitering by a shelf of boxed lunches at the grocery store, soaking up the AC, and wondering how long he can stand there leeching the cold air. Eventually, his feet start to hurt so he trudges his way to the checkout queue.

It’s his turn at the till when he realizes he’s five dollars short for what should amount to a week’s forth of food if carefully rationed: half a carton of eggs, some knockoff brand of cheese and bread, two enormous jugs of Mountain Dew, and a pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. 

“Shit,” Stensland hisses. “Shit, shit, shit.” He pats the pockets of his jacket and shorts but comes up with just bits of lint and a _Coors_ bottle cap, which the checkout lady seems unimpressed by. He’s about to pluck a few items off the counter — he can do without bread but not without his weekly fix of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups — when someone behind him hands over a crisp twenty dollar bill. Stensland stares at the hand and then the thick arm it’s attached to before finally pivoting his gaze to his saviour cum interloper: he looks… _oddly_ familiar, though his face is anything but friendly, covered with the fuzzy beginnings of a fucking goatee. He’s got a couple of inches on Stensland and looks like he can crush him with just his pinky finger, and Stensland decides immediately that he hates his longish hair. No one wears their hair like that anymore; the 90s is over and grunge is dead.

“Thanks,” Stensland mutters, shifting from foot to foot, embarrassed beyond belief. “You’re a life saver.”

The guy just grunts in reply. Later they fall into step on the sidewalk, when Stensland is managing but failing to juggle two heavy armfuls of groceries. The guy, Mr Gruntypants, Stensland has elected to call him, gives him a weird look before swooping in without warning to take Stensland’s twin jugs of Mountain Dew before they have the opportunity to tear through the bottom of his paper bag.

“Easy,” says Mr Gruntypants, hefting them in his left arm like they weighed nothing at all. He’s carrying a canvas bag full of produce in his right hand, and when Stensland looks at his other hand he realizes for the first time that the guy’s wearing a prosthetic arm, attached to his left elbow with a leather strap. He stares but only for half a minute, until he’s hit with the sudden realization that the guy is walking in the same direction he is.

“I’m sorry but are you following me?” Stensland says, stopping in front of his building.

“No? I live here.”

Stensland cocks his head at the guy, narrowing his eyes. “In this building?” he says flatly. “On this street.”

“Yes,” says Mr Gruntypants slowly. “ _Yes?_ ” He has an accent Stensland can’t quiet place yet, but he’s willing to guess it’s somewhere from the Midwest. Or Kentucky. Stensland sometimes gets the two confused. He hasn’t lived in the States long enough to figure out certain aspects of American-hood, like driving on the wrong side of the road, or iced water. 

“You sound unsure,” says Stensland.

The guy actually has the guts to smile faintly like this is all amusing to him - a _rse -_ before climbing up the crumbling front stoop and heaving the door open with his massive shoulder, waiting in the doorway for Stensland to come follow. 

“I live on the first floor,” says Mr Gruntypants, lowering his stuff on the ground so he can fish the keys out of his front pocket with his good hand. He was like a janitor, he had a ring of keys and everything, and even wore a navy blue shirt buttoned all the way up to the collar, a black t-shirt peeking from underneath the V. 

“I live on the third,” Stensland says. “I’m kind of new to the area. I moved here from Seattle.”

“Emerald City, huh? Wouldn’t have guessed from your accent.”

“What?” says Stensland. “Oh, yeah, I’m originally from Clifden which is … this little-known town in Ireland which is, as you know, in Europe?” Mr Gruntypants just sort of grunts again, blinking at him slowly. “Anyway, I was only in Seattle for about a year. It was nice though. I got drunk a lot. I ended up almost getting the clap a few times and there was this one time I was almost persuaded into getting a tramp stamp—”

“I’ll just put these down and then I’ll help you up the stairs,” says Gruntypants quickly. 

“Oh, oh all right. Thanks, that’s, that’s really nice of you!” Stensland says, suddenly distracted by and envious of the size of Mr Gruntypants’ den as soon he opens the door. There’s a lot of floor space to comfortably pace around in and he’s got a full-sized fridge crowded with a number of touristy magnets and pictures of family. 

Stensland helps himself inside even though he hasn’t been invited, cataloguing everything within range and trailing his fingers along the delicate wainscoting: there’s a dining table in a corner by the window, a cream-coloured couch, a forty-inch LED TV sitting right in front of it. Receipts and all sorts of legal forms were pinned to a tattered corkboard above what was probably Mr Gruntypants’ office desk, framed by a shelf of books and an assortment of old sports accolades, several picture frames in varying sizes sitting in a neat little row. The furniture didn’t look expensive, well-used and lived-in, but it was more than what Stensland — who used an overturned box as a stand-in for a coffee table — currently had. Stensland considers complimenting Mr Gruntypants on his paint job but keeps his mouth shut instead. 

The apartment tour is cut short when Mr Gruntypants suddenly remembers he has a visitor, then he’s quick to buoy Stensland out of the front door and up the three flight of stairs to Stensland’s own apartment, sparsely furnished and quite frankly stinking of Doritos and humidity.

Stensland is embarrassed to live in a sty but more embarrassed by the fact that Mr Gruntypants manages to step onto a pair of week-old pajamas on the floor. Also, he’d forgotten to do the dishes again and left his laptop out on the dining table, frozen to a grainy scene from _Ginger Twink Gets Creamed By Dark-haired Hunk._ Next to the laptop, innocuously, is a box of tissues already half empty and a sticky tube of lube. Nothing ever works out for Stensland, not really, so embarrassing himself is something he’s used to doing as it so frequently happens to him anyway. He tries to take all of this in stride and smiles faintly, closing the lid of his laptop. 

“I’m really not a freak,” he says, “I promise.”

“Okay,” says Mr Gruntypants eloquently, looking everywhere but Stensland, sounding like he doesn't quite believe that. “Where do you want these?” As if he couldn’t cross the entire apartment in ten whole strides, anyway. 

Stensland points to the kitchen counter where he clears some space for the groceries. 

“Lord, it’s hotter than the bowels of hell in here,” says Mr Gruntypants, greasing the back of his hand with sweat from his forehead. He pushes the hair from his face, tucks it behind one ear. A traitorous thought weasels its way into Stensland’s hind brain but he tamps it down before it has the opportunity to morph into something irreversible.

“The AC’s busted,” Stensland says, walking over to the knackered thing and giving it a sullen pat. “I’ve been trying to get hold of the landlord but he insists on being an arse and won’t return any of my calls.”

“Uh,” says Mr Gruntypants. “ _Okay_. Sorry about that. You want me to take a look at it?”

Stensland is chuffed, absolutely chuffed. “You’d do that for me? _For Free?_ ”

“Sure,” Mr Gruntypants says, and then he’s looking at Stensland weirdly. Not in a taking-his-clothes-off-with-his-eyes kind of weird, just a general unreadable sort of _weird_ that makes Stensland rub self-consciously at his cheek or wonder if he had somehow dreamt himself into a porno-type situation and this was when he was going to be made to start taking off his clothes. 

“I mean, why not?” continues Mr Gruntypants, “Since we’re…neighbours and all that.”

“Right,” says Stensland, and before he can quite stop himself: “You’re _lovely_.”

Mr Gruntypants just smiles, taking the compliment breezily. “I can come by in the afternoon after a couple things that I need to do. 4 o'clock?”

“Sounds perfect.”

Mr Gruntypants is already halfway out the door when Stensland remembers to ask his name.

“Wait!” he says.

Mr Gruntypants does a half turn to glance at him over his shoulder. Stensland flushes, and knows for a fact that it’s not from the heat. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name. I don’t want to just keep referring to you as Neighbour when we run into each other in the hall or the bus station because. That would be. Awkward. Hello, I’m _Stensland_.”

“Clyde,” says Mr Gruntypants, taking Stensland’s hand in his, giving it a good solid shake. You could tell a lot about a man through his handshake but Stensland is pretty sure he shouldn’t be making assumptions about the size of Clyde’s dick when he’d only just met him. 

“Nice to meet you Stensland,” Clyde says. 

Stensland has to catch himself mid-swoon. “I guess I’ll see you later,” he says instead, trying to go for noncommittal and not like he’s about to throw himself bodily out the window. He waves even after Clyde has disappeared down a flight of stairs. 

Stensland steps into his apartment and shuts the door behind him, leaning against it for a moment to fight off the inexplicable rush that has him scrambling for the laptop and lube on the table. He has to jam his thumb repeatedly into the power button of his laptop so he could help himself to his forty-sixth viewing _Ginger Twink Gets Creamed By Dark-haired Hunk Part II._

After a long shower, he has a leisurely nap where he dreams of Clyde blowing cool gusts of air along the naked skin of his back. Then Clyde actually manages to fix the AC in the dream before re-enacting all of Stensland’s favourite scenes from _Ginger Twink Gets Creamed By Dark-haired Hunk, I, II and III,_ including, even, the scene with the hairbrush and the classic one with the egg beater _._

 

 

 


End file.
